


Not For Nothing

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: Hustle Cat
Genre: Angst, Jealousy, Multi, Nonbinary Character, one-sided graves/reese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-30 00:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the moment they walk in, Reese can tell Avery Grey is trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not For Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> This is so short and angsty that I wouldn't typically post it anywhere but on tumblr, but this game needs content somethin fierce.

From the moment they walk in, Reese can tell Avery Grey is trouble. 

They smell like trouble (though that might just be the unwashed hoodie) and they look like trouble (though that just could be split ends). Who care if Graves find them interesting? He calls everything _interesting_ \--new brands of coffee, 3-legged strays, Finley’s batshit BL games.

(And it’s not like Reese had been eavesdropping on the interview--he had just been walking by and they were talking loudly, alright)

Avery is clumsy and enthusiastic, a bony kitten tripping over their own feet. Landry and Finley are immediately charmed, and Hayes blushes and stammers and then spends ten minutes making a fire-breathing dragon in their cappuccino foam. Even Mason seems a little less grim than usual.

Reese isn’t fooled. So what if their presence has injected a much-needed adrenaline shot into the cafe’s atmosphere? So what if all the cats love them? Trouble.

And the way Graves is acting…

He sails in during the afternoon lull, all charming turns of phrase and elegant flourishes, expounding on the staff’s virtues. The response is hesitant delight--Graves so rarely involves himself with anything on the cafe floor--but it makes Reese want to punch a wall. Graves is performing for Avery, getting up in their face, making them blush, giving them those private, ponderous smiles that Reese thought were only for him. He’s the one Graves can trust, who he can rely on. Even Reese’s dad gave up on Graves, but Reese hasn’t, couldn’t, never would.

And here Graves is, performing for some nerd who can barely work the coffeemaker, who falls apart under the threat of one tiny curse, and Reese just wants to know _why_.

And then one morning Avery comes in reeking of magic.

It churns out of their pores, seeps from beneath their fingernails. So much power, so little control, a sparkling spring watering nothing but sand. Reese can’t believe no one else notices--well, Landry probably does, but he’s so good at repressing he should have an honorary degree.

Graves notices, that’s for sure. He gaze keeps bouncing from whatever he’s doing to follow that purple fucking sweatshirt around the cafe, jaw tightening, like it’s costing him not to go to Avery, not to touch them, get his hands in their magic. He’s coming up with excuses to stay on the floor, checking and rechecking the wards. Reese just wants to grab his face, force his eyes back to him, his actual apprentice, his assistant manager.

When Avery hangs behind after close, Reese knows they’re staying for Graves. When Graves offers Reese his regrets that he won’t be able to go over the accounts that evening, he knows it’s because of Avery. This no one, this _child_. And when Reese finds Avery on the couch in the apartment, wrapped up in the grey and blue afghan, the one that Reese had insisted on in lieu of Graves’ default black, he knows that all the things he’s been afraid of are coming true.

“It’s not...it wasn’t anything weird! I’m just staying here, okay?”

Bits of Reese are rattling loose, sucked down into the dark quicksand amassing in the pit of his stomach. “Just because you’re his apprentice now, don’t think you’re close.”

His palms prickle with Avery’s magic--still barely repressed--and he itches to pull out his marker and draw something nasty. But he doesn’t. He keeps it together. He isn’t assistant manager for nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> i promise the next thing i write for this fandom won't be such a fucking downer.


End file.
